A) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic accompaniment apparatus, and more particularly to an automatic accompaniment apparatus capable of editing accompaniment style data.
B) Description of the Related Art
A user of an automatic musical performance apparatus plays only a melody line, and makes the apparatus reproduce accompaniment style data which is accompaniment data stored in the apparatus, by designating the accompaniment style data.
Accompaniment style data is prepared generally for each accompaniment style for each combination of such as type of rhythm, music genre and tempo. Each accompaniment style data has a plurality of sections matching the image of music, such as intro, main, fill-in and ending.
Each section is constituted of a plurality of tracks such as a chord track, a base track and a drum (rhythm) track.
Some conventional automatic accompaniment apparatuses store preset accompaniment data of a plurality of tracks for each accompaniment style. When user accompaniment data is to be generated, an accompaniment style for each track is designated and stored so that the user accompaniment data can be generated easily.
With a conventional automatic accompaniment apparatus, since all tracks are created by preset accompaniment data, it is difficult to have originality of the accompaniment data although the accompaniment style for each track can be designated and stored.
For example, designating the accompaniment style in the unit of section of accompaniment data having a plurality of sections has not been taken into consideration. It is difficult to generate accompaniment patterns having the same accompaniment data part and only different chord conversion characteristics, accompaniment patterns having only different panel setting information such as manual performance setting, and accompaniment patterns having only different settings such as the volume and effects of each track.
If additional sounds of manual performance or pad performance information are included in the panel setting information, it is difficult for different musical instruments to use accompaniment style data because there is no setting compatibility between the pad performance and the additional sounds of each musical instrument which reproduces the accompaniment style data.